If you are around my age, and lived in England in the late Seventies and early Eighties, you’ll probably remember the television series called “The Professionals” starring Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon Jackson; well if you saw my title and the image of a young and curly haired Martin Shaw came into your mind, I’m sorry to disappoint because this blog post has nothing to do with “The Professionals” and has all to do with professional editor and famous wordsmith James Harbeck conjecturing on the word “professional”.
If you love words I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with this YouTube video (hot off the press all the way from chilly Canada). Chris and I chuckled as we listened to James for fourteen minutes while I was cutting Chris’s hair this morning (as a result Chris’s hair ended up a little shorter than he had requested!).
In mentioning “The Professionals” I’m reminded about the time I met the actor Gordon Jackson in Brisbane… The year was 1986 and my beautiful Norwegian friend Hege had suggested that we do “something special” (perhaps to mark the end of our legal stenography course, which we both hated). The most unusual and special thing we could think of was to take breakfast in the swanky Crest Hotel in Brisbane’s centre. Sat directly across from us, at the crowded large table by the window, was a familiar face.
“I think that’s the actor Gordon Jackson,” I whispered to my friend.
“Gordon Jackson?” she asked.
“He was Hudson the butler in ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ and he was in ‘The Professionals’, and the Bryan Brown version of ‘A Town Like Alice’ – he played the Scottish solicitor. You must know him, Hegbone (my nickname for her),” I said.
“Oh yes, I know – the butler from ‘Upstairs, Downstairs'”, Hege beamed, “but are you sure it’s him?”
“Absolutely sure,” I said.
“Why don’t you go over and ask?” she giggled.
So I did.
Gordon Jackson was a charming older man, quite tickled that two young women in a hotel restaurant on the other side of the world should recognise him. He told me he was in Australia filming an Australian mini-series called “My Brother Tom” and he introduced me to his family who were dining with him. I told them about our unusual breakfast treat and they all waved and said hello to Hege on the table opposite. The meeting made our breakfast more special than we girls could have imagined. I was saddened just over three years later to learn that the lovely urbane gentleman, and true professional, Gordon Jackson had died of bone cancer at the age of sixty-six. It doesn’t seem quite such an age to me now all these years later.
And click on the image below to enjoy James Harbeck’s professional assessment of the word professional:
Word review: professional – YouTube
James Harbeck of Sesquiotica reviews the word “professional“
Ah, yes..Martin Shaw….not to be confused with BISHOP Martin Shaw, excellent Scottish deliverer of thoughtful and stirring sermons in pretty country churches, lately Episcopal Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, and a great orator.